Our Story – Who We Are

Canada’s Most Trusted Recruiter Of Finance And Accounting Executives

In 1985, Lance Osborne realized that there was a pressing need in the senior end of the finance and accounting recruiting market. Up to then, the market for accounting professionals was dominated by placement agencies. These firms kept a large inventory of junior and mid level accountants on file and were quite effective when a company needed to hire a General Ledger Accountant or Accounts Payable Supervisor. However, when a company needed to recruit a Chartered Accountant to fill a Controller or Director level role, traditional placement agencies didn’t have the resources to recruit for those positions.

In response to this gap, Lance launched Lannick Associates, the first and only true executive search firm specialized in recruiting accounting professionals and executives. Over the course of the next 28 years, Lance helped hundreds of firms build outstanding finance and accounting teams, filling every position on the finance org chart from the CFO down.

In 2008, Lance sold his interest in Lannick Associates to make what turned out to be a failed attempt at retirement. He decided to reenter the executive search business and started to look for the next big idea in recruitment.

Lance realized that today’s technology has radically changed the recruitment process by increasing the reach of recruiters while at the same time reducing the cost. The search process has become increasingly commoditized but almost all recruitment firms still worked on a success fee model, with fees commonly based on 25% to 30% of remuneration, regardless of the time or effort required to fill the assignment.

Lance founded Osborne Financial Search to provide a professional, reliable and cost effective alternative to traditional placement agencies and recruitment firms. We charge on an hourly rate basis and the end fee is a function of how much time and effort we need to invest in the project, not the remuneration of the candidate hired. We guarantee our results and cap our fees at 20% of salary so our clients know the upper range of what they should budget for the search.

We know that cost reduction and predictability of outcomes lie at the centre of any talent acquisition program. Our value for money recruitment process takes the guess work out of the hiring process. Our clients know at the beginning of each search how much it’s going to cost, how long it’s going to take and what the expected outcomes are going to be. Not only do we want our clients to hire the best candidate, we want them to have the assurance that they’ve hired the best possible candidate available.